The Works - Small Business HubSmall Business News and Advice2014-04-23T12:34:26Zhttp://www.tworkshb.com/feed/atom/WordPressRichttp://http://www.tworkshb.com/?p=13742014-02-27T11:12:59Z2014-02-27T11:12:59ZThe digital marketing platform is both innovative and yet harsh on those that want a piece of the action. When the marketing boom began in the late 2000′s, many were making money of it and most that were not big companies as such. These were small companies with a small workforce. This was because SEO was mostly simpler back then. Links to other sites would rack up a lot of traffic and the search engines (mainly Google) didn’t mind this approach.

The approach was left open to of course fraud and click baiting to self boost finances from the search engines. Over the past couple of years, the search engines have gone a long way to rectify their mistakes with the original approach. This means that only those that truly understand the platform will be successful rather than those that start off small. For the individual to be successful in this area means that more than likely he/she would have to work for a company that is well versed in the area.

And its a shame as such because this makes marketing difficult for companies as well as clients. The constant changes to algorithms and how companies can properly utilise SEO, social media and other areas of digital marketing must be precise enough in order for the search engines to pick up on the site. Digital marketing is booming right now and there are plenty of agencies within multiple cities. The boom will eventually cause stagnation in the field and will lead to only the biggest companies being able to make any gains out of the field. What’s more is that the bigger city companies swallow leads and jobs in which could have fallen to smaller companies.

]]>0Richttp://http://www.tworkshb.com/?p=13702014-02-25T12:12:26Z2014-02-25T12:12:26ZThe hashtag (#) is one of the most important features for social media particularly Facebook and Twitter. Linked in did briefly support the feature last year but to its far more mature audience, the hashtag did not perform as well as it could have done. The hashtag tags a word or phrase relevant to what is being posted on the social media network in question. For example, if you are a restaurant posting an offer, you may want to hashtag the word #offer so that those viewing the update will see it as a promotional offer.

It is a very useful feature for social media given that these hashtags can be made public for anyone to view when a person types in a phrase on social media and your business’ result could be on there. Ultimately, they serve to be useful promotional feature’s in which can help enhance the visibility of your business through social media. Hashtagging was born on Twitter and remains to be probably its mst recgnised feature. Yet the feature has transferred over to Facebook.

It is also very useful n Facebook equally if not more so than Twitter due to the fact that there are far more many users on Facebook than Twitter. Facebook is said to have around 1.1 billion users while Twitter is said to have over a third less than Facebook. Facebook is the more valuable social media network and adding the hashtag feature makes it more valuable to businesses. What better way to be found on Facebook by incorporating features such as the hashtag to help people and businesses alike get recognised.

The hashtag is a valuable feature for social media networks and even though it is arguably the flagship feature for Twitter, its use on Facebook is there for everyone and anyone to see. Using hashtags that are relevant to your business will only help it grow on social media in the future.

]]>0Richttp://http://www.tworkshb.com/?p=13682014-02-24T12:08:39Z2014-02-24T12:08:39ZEvery major website and most websites online blog. Blogging refers to personal articles created to highlight opinion or other themes within a specified area. It is renowned that blogging is a good showing of personality online and a way in which to reach out to people personally. Blogging can also be a major part of marketing and the overall repertoire of a website. For you see, blogging as much as it is for the people is also for the company itself.

Websites and companies online will have a certain sector in which they work in. From online only targets to working in journalism or even machinery-read around the internet for major companies and you will be guaranteed to see most if not all will blog. These articles that these companies produce address target audiences in the hope of familiarising them self with that group of people. Opinion is key. Just stating facts alienate most people and companies that appear to be the Lord almighty will come unstuck to the targeted audience.

Companies and businesses need to reach out to people online not just through promotion but also through personal writing and things that people will find interesting. Blogging is a major innovation of the new digital age which is extremely helpful to all businesses online in their quest to find success online. Like anything, people want to be able to trust companies and businesses. That way, people are more likely to use that company/business more than any other company.

]]>0Richttp://http://www.tworkshb.com/?p=13662014-02-21T12:20:58Z2014-02-21T12:20:58ZIn our series of looks at digital marketing, today we look at how social media has revolutionised the ways in which we use digital marketing and communication for businesses. Social media is generally speaking easy to use and also the vast majority of us use it therefore most have a certain degree of capability with it. Social media marketing (SMO) as it has come to be known can be seen as an essential practice for businesses as we approach an ever growing digital platform.

Social media peaked in 2008 as Facebook began to revolutionise the ways in which we conduct our daily lives. Facebook, Twitter and Linked In are the 3 biggest social media networks for the West (China has a large social media network but not many businesses need to focus on that due to proxy issues etc).

Linked In is a good social media network for example as it mainly business orientated and also the majority of its users all have a Bachelors degree which spells out the maturity of the audience. Facebook is universal as boasting the biggest registered user base of all ages, it makes it useful for businesses given that it can in theory target just about anyone and everyone. Twitter is a mixed bag. It has a good user base and also a mature edge. Yet it is used by most people of all ages giving it the advantage that Facebook has.

Marketing on these networks, businesses can in theory reach out to a greater audience that was once not possible with physical only means of advertising. The days of businesses being found under the telephone in the Yellow Pages is long long gone. Social media is and can the driving force behind many businesses irrespective of their size.

]]>0Richttp://http://www.tworkshb.com/?p=13632014-02-20T11:53:17Z2014-02-20T11:53:17ZDigital marketing is a complex web of services in which it targets businesses and wealthy individuals that run/own websites in order to make them more profitable online. The face of marketing has changed dramatically since the late 200′s as there are many free marketing options available to businesses. So why should they stump up and pay a fee in order to successfully market their business online? Also, due to the fact that we are rapidly becoming more proliferate in using computers, it is no surprise that most businesses do their marketing all in-house.

Yes the likes of SEO and SMO can be done for free. SEO has basic linking options from linking to the likes of classifieds or other websites as a good way of increasing traffic. That being said, the paid for options are much better as they naturally mean that the options a business has will be maximised. But the difference between in-house and paid-for agency marketing is not as substantial as it once was. What will happen invariably at some point will be that businesses will do their own marketing rather than seek agencies to do it for them.

Social media plays a very important factor in marketing and it has to be said, there are very few that do not know how to use social media accordingly. This is because quite simply that a large number of people use it every single day so marketing on the networks should be no problem for most people as it is merely a change in focus that is required.

Digital marketing will soon go into a free model in which agencies will not be required. There will always be digital marketing agencies but only the biggest will thrive. Smaller agencies will struggle as the search engines start to make things more difficult for marketing in general and as a whole.

]]>0Richttp://http://www.tworkshb.com/?p=13602014-02-19T14:52:55Z2014-02-19T14:52:55ZBusinesses that commission websites to be made for their business will have a decision to make to which cms they should use for their website. The easy to use WordPress or the advanced Joomla? Both are excellent and extremely capable for the large portion of websites out there. There is no right or wrong as to which to use necessarily. What it boils down to is how capable the users are with the website and how well the website will be maintained.

Beginning with wordpress and this cms is used all over widely. It is used widely because it is generally easy to use and maintain. Compared to Joomla, wordpress can be customised at will and that customisation won’t effect much in the grand scheme of things. Plugins can be easily installed into the system and can greatly enhance the website in various ways. These plugins can range from helping develop monetising options to other possibilities.

Joomla is different to wordpress as it is far more advanced and generally speaking more capable. Despite the range of customisation on offer with WordPress, Joomla has the edge when it comes down to it as it has better quality in its options and websites are far more capable as a result. Design for Joomla is much more advanced also. However, not anyone can use Joomla as it borders on specialist mostly and needs to be utilised properly in order to function accordingly.

Joomla is the more capable system to use for most websites especiay for businesses. Yet, wordpress is just as capable for a number of purposes and for businesses on a tight budget, wordpress may well be the better option to use.

]]>0Richttp://http://www.tworkshb.com/?p=13572014-02-18T16:44:42Z2014-02-18T16:44:42ZOnline marketing now is made much more complicated by the search engines. The search engines is the key to all the traffic that happens on the internet every single day. The keys to the success for an online presence lie mostly in online marketing-mostly. I say mostly because a large number of sites are popular as they are popularised through other means such as peer relations and so on. The key is not always necessarily in the marketing but how the business appears in the said marketing.

Communication is important-very important. For you see, if you communicate nothing online then the chances are that the consumers and clients will not communicate back in any way. This mainly revolves around social media which is probably the best tool to use when communicating anything to clients and consumers. It helps also in building relationships with those clients in order to help them gain more success.

Another key is making the most of marketing through the likes of PPC and SEO. See, PPC is useful in making advertising more prolific for a business. It also helps make money for the business depending on how many clicks and clickthroughs the ad gets initially. SEO is different to what it once was. Instead of being about links, its very much natural and hollistic. So anything out of place or anything that appears spam like will only hurt a website’s online presence.

So being more natural and at ease in the overall web strategy is key to help a business be more successful and present online.

]]>0Richttp://http://www.tworkshb.com/?p=13542014-02-10T14:51:07Z2014-02-10T14:51:07ZSEO is by no means a foregone conclusion. It simply changes far too often for anyone’s liking with regard to search engine algorithms . One of the problems is the ways in which SEO can be manipulated for click fraud to help boost the site over other sites. However, even the simplest SEO tactics can help boost a website but not as significant as other methods. Social media as recently discussed on this site has overtaken SEO to become more valuable.

Its place is recognised by the search engines but the ways in which SEO is seen has changed. The search engines want SEO to appear more natural rather than forced. Its gradually becoming harder for businesses to keep up with the changes the search engines make especially Google which is both frequent and harsh with its changes. Links to other sites are the common practice for SEO but it may or may not be as useful.

Social media is much harder to manipulate as discussed earlier than SEO. But SEO still has its place for landing pages more than anything. Landing pages are the pages on websites in which adverts and marketing campaigns redirect the ad to that page on the site. So for PPC, SEO has to done correctly in order for the search engines to positively see it.

Overall, much has been made of SEO by tech enthusiasts and on here also. Its a very useful marketing process but it is slowly ebbing away. It can be effective whether free or using paid options depending on the nature of the SEO i.e. link, keywords etc. PPC is certainly proving to be more valuable as is social media in what is becoming the death of the SEO.

]]>0Richttp://http://www.tworkshb.com/?p=13502014-02-06T09:56:15Z2014-02-06T09:56:15ZSEO-the way we know it is going to die sooner rather than later. After initially being rather simple playing host to all sorts of methods which helped businesses gain success online, it is social media that is instead looking to take the reigns as being the most valuable form of digital marketing in 2014. The thing is social media is harder to manipulate than SEO and the constant changes to SEO is undermining most businesses.

Google for example makes constant changes to its algorithms in which businesses can effectively conduct SEO. Bing and Yahoo despite having far less traffic also are not currently making it easier for businesses to do SEO effectively. Social media is difficult to manipulate as SEO can be maipulated with paid-for links etc. Social media in order to be successful for businesses online needs to have a healthy amount of content i.e. status updates, sharing updates, follower activity etc.

It is harder to manipulate this because it would take digital marketing agencies far more effort to manipulate social media rather than SEO. SEO can be manipulated through as I said paid-for links, content on their website which is dense with SEO keywords and other ways. A problem though like anything is the internet constantly reinvents itself all the time. What happens when social media isn’t necessary for businesses?

What would come to replace it? For now, social media is very important for businesses everywhere as it acts as the main means of communication to clients, customers and fans potentially. What will happen to SEO? SEO is already mostly decreased in value. There are basic ways of making websites easier for the search engines to crawl but the search engines recognise a social media presence more than a website using SEO effectively.

2014-will it be the year social media takes centre stage for the search engines? I want to know what you think. What do you think will take centre stage? Can businesses keep up with the constant changes made to SEO or will they now finally get a reprieve with social media? Let me know in the comments.

]]>0Richttp://http://www.tworkshb.com/?p=13482014-01-30T11:16:56Z2014-01-30T11:16:56ZAs we know, digital marketing is becoming one of the most important ways to find success online for a business. It is seen as the only way by most. What is important to remember about digital marketing is that the market while initially friendly for the user is in fact anything but and the market constantly changes. So those that are in charge of marketing policies need to take care and manage their trends perfectly.

SEO is the most popular way to market a website online. It is still important nowadays despite its traditional methods being reduced to rubble. The search engines opt for quality linking, natural content and correct use of keywords. It can be complicated but SEO is best done as naturally as possible. By doing slo, businesses can appear to be reaching out naturally rather than under a marketing or any other pretence.

Social media is now becoming the new ‘SEO’. It is an extremely important digital marketing process in which when done correctly can gain better results than SEO. A lot is being made if social media will retain is potency and still be a major force in the coming years. Lets put this into perspective. Facebook currently has around 1.1 billion registered users. That number is expected to nearly double to 2 billion by 2020.

The potential of Twitter and Linked In also make social media an extremely valuable resource for businesses. With the amount of users registered to these networks, a business can reach out far without having to reach out far geographically.

Finally there is PPC which is basically advertising on the search engines. Results are quicker with this option and when managed properly can be profitable for businesses. However, it can be an expensive marketing options depending on keywords and the value of those keywords on the search engines. Done correctly and a business’ website will instantly see the results envelop for the company.

Overall, digital marketing is still a major force and is still rising. Businesses that do not yet use digital marketing in anyway take heed of the statistics-you are missing out and continuing to do so will only hamper the business more.